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£4 Million Lotto "Winners" Admit Fraud After Two Year Legal Battle

£4 Million Lotto "Winners" Admit Fraud After Two Year Legal Battle

The pair had gone on a four-day bender after their "win", but the ticket was paid for with someone else's debit card

Simon Catling

Simon Catling

In a saga stretching back to 2019, two Lotto 'winners' have finally admitted to fraud after being suspected of buying the ticket to their £4 million jackpot with someone else's credit card.

In April of 2019, father-of-two Mark Goodram, 36, from Bolton, claimed to have bought the scratchcard from a Waitrose supermarket in Clapham, south London that won him and his pal Jon-Ross Watson, 31, a staggering £4 million.

Mark Goodram.
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According to the Daily Mail, Goodram had 22 convictions for 45 offences as of March last year, with Watson also possessing a criminal record.

The pair went on a four-day bender to celebrate their 'win', posting their escapades across social media. However, when trying to deposit the money to them, the National Lottery discovered that neither of the men owned a bank account and so naturally became suspicious.

A legal wrangle ensued, with the pair last year claiming that the card used to buy the ticket in fact belonged to a male friend and that they had no knowledge it might be stolen.

Jon-Ross Watson.
Facebook

They added that they had had permission from the card owner in return for paying his bill in a London brothel. The man in question denied this was the case.

Fast forward to December and The Sun are now reporting that it looks like their house of cards has come falling down, with the pair admitting at the last minute that they had in fact committed fraud.

With the case heading to trial after they'd initially stated that they'd won the money 'fair and square', Goodram and Watson changed their plea at the last minute to guilty to three counts of fraud by false representation.

Bolton Crown Court heard how they had travelled to Clapham, from their hometown in Bolton in Lancashire to 'beg' as a way of making some cash.

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While in London, though, they used details from a debit card that wasn't theirs to buy scratchcards from Waitrose. The first card yielded a £10 victory, but the second was somewhat heftier at a whopping £4 million.

They instantly tried to claim the prize from Camelot on April 22 2019, before going on to party for four days straight.

However, Camelot never did give them any of the £4 million and so their 'only monetary gain' was £172.34 after shopping in Londis and Waitrose at the expense of the person whose card it was.

It's currently unclear what has happened to the actual money.

Back in June last year, a third man also came forward claiming that it was his card that had been used, but this too was rejected.

Camelot said at the time that it 'does not comment on individual prize claims', and follows 'rigorous security procedures as part of the ticket validation process'.

Featured Image Credit: Facebook

Topics: UK News, crime